I recently visited two refugee camps in northern Iraq, Domiz and Kawergost. The camps are home mainly to Kurdish refugees from Syria. Domiz is the biggest camp in Iraq, originally designed to host 20,000 refugees and now home to over 50,000. Despite having access to free food and healthcare, the majority of the refugees there have chosen to find work in the nearby town of Dohok or to set up small businesses in the camp, such as kebab and barber shops. However, their presence has put pressure on the local population. Kamal, an Iraqi-Kurdish taxi driver, told me that his son, a tile layer, had had to reduce his fee almost by half to compete with the refugees. A recent influx of some 40,000 refugees could not be accommodated in Domiz and new camps have been set up to receive them. Kawergost, a camp near the city of Erbil, was established a week prior to my visit. Many of the families did not have tents yet and were camped directly on the sand in the blazing heat. The medical facilities were rudimentary and there were no bathing facilities. Some of the refugees complained about the haphazard way in which provisions were distributed. At Domiz, I met Abdel-Rahman, a university graduate in his late 20s who works for a local charity and lives in the camp. Abdel-Rahman was doing his military service at the start of the revolution in Syria. He became sympathetic to the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and used to go into the office of his commandant to photograph documents useful to the FSA, passing on their content verbally. Then the FSA asked him to carry out an operation: to kill his army buddies and steal their ammunition. They promised to provide him with safe passage to Jordan afterwards. However, he couldn't go through with it and eventually fled to the Kurdish territory in the northeast and from there to Iraq. Over the course of my visit, I met several other young men who had fled the regular army in Syria because they did not want to participate in its brutality. Syria's Kurds also face problems that are unique to them. Many of them were not allowed to have full citizenship under the Al-Assad regime, although this policy was partially reversed at the start of the revolution because, as one of the refugees put it, “[Bashar] Al-Assad wanted to win us to his side but we saw through his actions.” They were forbidden to teach the Kurdish language in school, have their own TV stations, or even possess books written in Kurdish. Lorraine, a 20-year-old who was studying law before she had to flee the country with her family and settle in camp Kawergost, told me that at school and university she had had to use the Arabic name of Rawayda because her father was not allowed to register her under her Kurdish name. Her brother, Rawan, faced similar discrimination when he tried to find employment in the oil sector because in his state security report it was written that he posed a threat to national security as he lived in an area where there was sympathy for Kurdish political parties. However, both siblings as well as all the refugees I spoke to at Kawergost, were fleeing for other reasons. In recent months, Syria's Kurds have come under attack from the Al-Nusra Front, an organisation affiliated with Al-Qaeda, which considers Kurds as infidels. Anoot, a mother in her 40s, told me that “fighting in our village broke out over a cigarette. Al-Nusra Front fighters saw a Kurdish boy smoking during Ramadan and used that as an excuse to attack us.” Al-Nusra has been shelling Kurdish towns and villages and sometimes even sending in suicide bombers. Many of the refugees I spoke to told me how they had tried resisting by setting up local committees to protect their neighbourhoods, but their light weapons had been no match for those of the Al-Nusra Front, whose fighters are armed with RPGs and in some cases tanks. Renas, a 22-year-old, said he had joined one of the Kurdish local committees after seeing Al-Nusra fighters douse three young Kurds with petrol and set them on fire. His parents, however, feared for his safety and insisted he leave for Iraq. The rest of Renas's story is an example of the resilience and entrepreneurial spirit of the refugees. Renas first arrived in Domiz, yet despite the relatively comfortable conditions there, he decided to move to Kawergost in search of business opportunities, as he couldn't compete with the wealthier merchants in Domiz. With his savings of $200, he bought French cigarettes, lighters and phone cards from a local trader he met outside the Kawergost camp and is now making a reasonable living selling them to new arrivals. He sits in front of a table containing his merchandise from morning till sundown, unfazed by the relentless sun beaming down on him. “I send most of my money back home to support the nine members of my family, but I'm hoping to expand the business, turning this table into a stall, or, who knows, maybe something bigger.” According to a report by the International Rescue Committee, in August 2013 Iraq was home to 10 per cent of the Syrian refugees — nearly 200,000 — and yet had received only six per cent of the UN appeal funds, making it one of the most under-funded responses in the Syria crisis. For many of the refugees who worked in Syria as manual labourers, there is perhaps a chance that they will be absorbed into the local economy, particularly in cities such as Erbil where there is a booming construction industry. But what will happen to the likes of Lorraine and Rawan, university students whose education has been cut short? Will the Kurdish government be able to offer them university places? Here is perhaps an opportunity for other countries in the region to do more, by providing some of these students with places at their own universities to complete their education.
The writer is an Iraqi scientist and playwright living in London. His first play, Baghdad Wedding, was staged at the Soho Theatre and won the Meyer-Whitworth, George Devine and Pearson awards.
